864 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The State Board of Health of Massa- 

 chusetts continues to follow up the use of 

 arsenic in manufactures under all its dis- 

 guises. They still tind the poison in dan- 

 gerous proportions in papers of various 

 colors, particularly in the glazed papers of 

 fancy boxes, cornucopias, confectionery- 

 boxes, etc., concert tickets, and playing- 

 cards, and iu children's toys and articles of 

 clothing. " German fly-paper " is soaked in 

 arsenite of sodium, and is dangerous in more 

 ways than one. The "Buffalo Carpet Moth 

 Annihilator" contains 6 - 7l26 per cent of 

 crystals of white arsenic, and " Rough on 

 Hats " contains white arsenic crystals. 



Paper bedclothes are made at a factory 

 in New Jersey. They are doubled sheets of 

 manila paper, strengthened with twine, and 

 valuable by reason of the peculiar proper- 

 ties of paper as a non-conductor of heat. 

 They have a warmth-preserving power far 

 out of proportion to their thickness and 

 weight. 



The Swedish papers report that a crane 

 was shot at Orkened, in Scania, on the 19th 

 of June, which bore a card containing the 

 verse 



" I come from the burning sand, 

 From Soodan, the murderers' land, 

 Where they told the lie 

 That Gordon would die." 



The bird had previously been wounded in 

 the wing, and was much exhausted. 



The Aberdeen (Scotland) "Journal" 

 records a remarkable instance of the effect 

 of atmospheric influences on the visibility 

 of lights at night. In March, 1885, the 

 captain of the steamer City of Aberdeen 

 saw the Girdleness light in Aberdeen Bay, 

 at the distance of more than thirty-six miles, 

 and the Buchan-Ness light when it was thir- 

 ty-two miles off. The distances at which 

 these lights are considered ordinarily visi- 

 ble are nineteen and seventeen miles re- 

 spectively. 



The " Lancet " publishes a list of facts to 

 show the dangerous character of foot-ball. 

 In its casual examinations of the papers, it 

 has, without making special search for them, 

 recorded some dozen or more instances of 

 serious accidents in which bones were bro- 

 ken one of which resulted in death, that 

 occurred in the course of games. While 

 the "Lancet" thinks it would be unwise 

 and undesirable to abolish the game, which 

 is the principal winter amusement of thou- 

 sands of young people, it calls for a reform 

 in the rules and practice, with such regu- 

 lations as will reduce the number and se- 

 verity of accidents, which, being secured, it 

 believes the sport is capable of far more 

 good than harm. 



M. J. C. IIouzEAtr, in examining some 

 old astronomical manuscripts at Brussels, 



has met the works of three Belgian astron- 

 omers whose names were previously un- 

 known. Henry Selder observed at Tournai 

 in the fourteenth century. In 1340 he had 

 compared Ptolemy's catalogue of the stars 

 with the sky, to ascertain what stars had 

 disappeared and what changed magnitude 

 since the catalogue was compiled. He also 

 compiled a second series of observations in 

 1367. Eustache de Eldris, who styled him- 

 self an astronomer of Liege, made tables of 

 the planets ; and Henri of Malines wrote a 

 treatise on astrology. 



Mr. Pi. A. Mullan, an Irish solicitor, 

 mentions the singular observation during a 

 hailstorm in County Down, that some of the 

 hailstones perhaps one in a hundred were 

 of a decided red color. Taking up some of 

 them, he found that the color was not mere- 

 ly superficial, but pervaded the substance of 

 the hailstones, and, on melting, they stained 

 his fingers. 



OBITUARY NOTES. 

 Ms. N. W. Posthumus, Director of the 

 Higher Burgher School, at Amsterdam, who 

 died recently, was one of the founders of 

 the Dutch Geographical Society, its secre- 

 tary from the beginning, and one of the 

 editors of its journal. He was forty-seven 

 years old. 



Dr. Barius, surgeon - general to the 

 French army in Tonquin, died in Haiphong 

 June 10th. He was known to the scien- 

 tific world by his meteorological writings, 

 of which the principal essay embodied his 

 researches on the climate of the Senegal. 

 He kept a regular series of observations at 

 Haiphong. 



Dr. Emil Riebeck, a distinguished trav- 

 eler, recently died suddenly at Feldkirch, 

 Germany, where he was preparing for a 

 five years' journey. Besides being a traveler 

 himself, he was a liberal patron of explor- 

 ers. He had borne the expense, among 

 other enterprises, of Dr. Schweinfurth's re- 

 cent researches in Socotra. 



Mr. W. S. W. Vaux, F. R. S., a numis- 

 matist and Oriental scholar, and Secretary 

 of the Royal Asiatic Society, is dead, at the 

 age of sixty-seven years. 



M. Henri Tresca, an eminent French 

 physicist and engineer, died in June, in the 

 seventieth year of his age. He filled the 

 chair of Industrial Mechanics in the Con- 

 servatoire des Arts et Metiers, and was the 

 author of works on "Applied Mechanics" 

 and the "Flowing of Liquids." He was 

 elected a member of the French Academv in 

 1872. 



Professor A. W. Eklund, a distin- 

 guished Swedish physicist, has recently 

 died at Lund, aged ninety years. 



